


I'm sorry about yesterday

by sleepy_fl0wers



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Comfort No Hurt, Dark Academia, Established Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, George and big Q are there too :], I FORGOT TO TAG THIS BUT SAPNAP AND DREAM BEING BROTHERS FOR 1K WORDS STRAIGHT, Just idiots in love, Love Confessions, M/M, No Angst, Purple Prose, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, STARS AND SUN AND MOON IMAGERY, Secret Relationship, Sneaking Around, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, at a certain point i say the moon and the sun are wlw and i think that is so cool, but im a loser in love with space, but nothing too bad !!, but only mentioned so i will NOT tag them, i know basic ettiquette, im a loser, tagged teen and up for themes such as a smidge of religious trauma, the title seems menacing but it's just because of the fox cademy song i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 09:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30002955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepy_fl0wers/pseuds/sleepy_fl0wers
Summary: "Oh, my love," Karl says. "No wonder they call you sappynappy.""Hey!-""But that's okay." Is what slips out onto the silent room. It's like it's holding its breath along with them, waiting in awe and remaining the only witness to the loving truths enveloped in silk they say to each other."Cause I don't think I could stop loving you, even after we're gone, and so are the stars."Moments like these, are when Sapnap simply knows that there is nothing he could want more than Karl's gaze on him for eternity.Nothing more he could need that isn't his light, the glimmer of his happiness, and the rumble of his voice. Of everything that makes him his beloved; his sweetness, and his beauty, and his wonderful capacity to be the brightest person in the room without even trying.AKA. b,,boarding school au,,, my beloved,,, theyre so in love,,,
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 16
Kudos: 77





	I'm sorry about yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this fic for WEEKS, posting it after writing it for so long is such a relief omg,,,
> 
> title is from [I'm sorry about yesterday by Fox Academy !!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qBm5u-K6Tg) it's a banger song and really suits the dark academia boarding school aesthetic :)
> 
> I actually fucking love this AU, so believe me, expect wayyy more from this setting :] !! I really hope you enjoy !
> 
> Please don't show this to ccs, i would be so embarrased and leave the internet forever /lh all recommendations within the fandom are so cool though !! If at any point in time Karl and Sap express any kind of discomfort towards fanfiction i will take this down immediately :)

Maybe there was a time in which Sapnap was unhappy in this place.

He thinks of it objectively sometimes. Tries to remember what eleven-year old him must have felt like when arriving for the first time to a boarding school after his parents told him he needed to learn how to behave like a proper young man.

He remembers feeling abandoned at first; remembers the first nights being terrifying. The loneliness the place, with its tall wooden doors and permanently cold stone hallways, practically radiated. With its snowy courtyards and silent praying rooms, always ready to be occupied, always empty and hollow.  
Little of that has changed anyways; the doors are still heavy and creaky, the hallways are still freezing during winter, and he's still stuck in this school he might as well call a prison. He’s just gotten used to it now. And he's just not lonely anymore.

Nonetheless, he still remembers the unsureness that came with said loneliness. He was never very good at trusting people; let alone actually making friends.

As nothing more than a kid, way before he was even called Sapnap, the rest of the kids in his class seem to already know each other, whether it would have been for years or their whole lives.

He feels insecure whenever they chat in small groups, laughing and talking with silly inside jokes that make him feel like an intruder in this giant, white classroom, with a tie too tight around his collar and shoes so polished he feels he’s gonna ruin them just by wearing them and _breathing._  
He sits in his chair in the row at the middle, surrounded by long-time friends that laugh with open mouths, joyous and carefree. 

He’s frozen in his seat, curled into himself as something bitter and awkward settles in his belly, almost like a hurricane; angry water seeping through and swaying him until he’s nauseous.  
He feels _very_ much alone, and it’s the last school he attended all over again; an epitome of being different, of being called a freak, and always sitting at lunch with teachers far too interested in what he has to say to be genuine. 

He always hated the pity in their eyes.

The classroom still resonates with chatter as his head hangs low, eyes unfocused and lost in thought, in anything that might help the day pass by faster, end as quickly as possible so he can be done, and repeat until the weekend arrives. But apparently, the universe loathes him, because his plans are gracefully interrupted by a stranger that rapidly approaches him.

“Oh, you must be new here!” a giddy voice calls. 

He immediately looks up and is met with a kid around his age, smiling confidently, but still, in a kind way. It makes him feel welcome for the first time since he’s gotten to this cold place.  
“What’s your name?” Whoever this boy might be asks, all crooked smiles and open wide green eyes staring at him. He feels psychoanalyzed, with the strength and intensity of his stare.

After a few seconds of silent nervousness, he dares give him a tight-lipped smile, and he can’t tell whether it’s born out of fear, or genuine quiet happiness of being spoken to. “I’m Nick.”

The kid in front of him smiles, carefree and unrestrained in return.  
“Well Nick,” he starts. “I’m Dream. It’s nice to meet you.”

Nick stalls for a second. “There’s no way your name is Dream.” he slips out, along with an incredulous smile that takes over his face.  
Still, he can’t help but laugh under his breath in a light-hearted way.  
Dream just stares for a second, a slight frown on his face. It's the first time throughout the whole conversation that Nick has seen him being serious, and he's suddenly overcome with worry.  
_Did he really just mess up his first chance at making a friend?_

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean it like that.” He stammers out after a few seconds of silence. “I think it’s cool! I’ve just never met anyone named that before.” 

The boy in front of him seems to give himself a second to savor the words.  
“It’s okay. Dream isn’t actually my real name anyways,” he says with a shrug. “Only my friends call me that. Everyone else just calls me by my name.”

Guilt overcomes Nick. He doesn’t want Dream to feel bad about this, but he doesn’t know what he can do to make better the suddenly heavy air that hangs around them either.  
Dream seems like such a nice person, -really, considering he was nice enough to approach him in the first place, to try and engage in a conversation.- and he really doesn’t want things to go badly.

“Well, I think it’s a cool name, Dream,” he says, tries to make emphasis on the name, tries to give the most genuine smile he can muster. Dream immediately pipes up at Nick's words, and it’s enough encouragement to push him to keep going. “How about you give me a cool nickname too?”

Dream stares at him for a few seconds, eyes wide, before he finally answers, face breaking into a grin.

“Really?” there are no other words to describe his tone that isn’t hopeful.

“Yeah! I mean it.” 

Dream goes deep in thought now, grabbing a chair from the desk behind him, and sitting down in front of him.  
“Okay then. What’s your favorite animal?” he asks after a few seconds, taking out a piece of white paper that’s tinted yellow by the corners, and a pen with a blue cap from out of his pocket.

He thinks, thinks, _thinks,_ because now that he thinks about it, no one has asked about his favorite animal in years. It’s difficult to come up with an answer that Dream, that sits in front of him might deem cool enough to keep talking to him, so he blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

“Pandas.” He says, voice quiet, almost scared that it still won’t be sufficient enough. “They’re- they’re nice bears.”

Dream smiles, and he mirrors the action immediately. The latter immediately writes down the answer in his sheet of yellowed paper, handing it over to him. It’s silly, and his handwriting can be more described as scribbles than words, but there’s something giddy that settles deep down inside his stomach.

“Okay then!” Dream exclaims, still smiling wide. “Pandas it is!”

There's a minute of silence in which Nick goes over the nickname.  
“That’s it?” He trails off, staring at the paper in his hands. “Just Pandas?”

“Oh _come_ on now!” Dream says, almost offended, but still sporting a smirk. “It’s good!”

“It’s kind of… simple?”

“Okay then, Mr. _I'm-so-good-at-nicknames_ , What would you suggest?” Dream says, but before he’s even allowed to answer, _hell_ , to _think_ of an answer, he’s being interrupted by Dream’s loud gasp, and the slamming of the chair as he gets up from it.  
It earns him a couple of looks from the rest of the kids in the classroom, but Dream doesn’t even blink an eye. They all settle back into their conversations easily.

“Sapnap.” He says blankly. “It’s perfect! It’s Pandas backwards!”

He doesn’t think it’s _really_ Pandas backwards, but the name is nice, and Dream seems way too pleased with himself for Sapnap to actually say it out loud to him.  
_Sapnap. Has a nice ring to it._

Sapnap is surprised he can say everything came naturally after that first meeting. From the introductions to the rest of the Feral Boys, as they liked to call themselves, -courtesy of their math teacher calling them feral and uncontrolled after they were too loud in class, as Sapnap came to learn- to his inclusion in the small circle of trust.

It’s almost immediate, the connection.

It’s Quackity’s boisterous laughter, clashing with George’s snappy and quick comebacks, and Dream’s restless need to keep smiling at everyone. Sapnap loves them all greatly almost instantly, in between sprints among concrete floors and long hugs that leave him breathing with difficulty after. In between smiles so wide, his face hurts, and whispers during the sermons the pastor gives at the end of every week.

They’re comfort among the cold school.  
Suddenly, the hallways aren’t so cold anymore; the windows don’t fog with the heat of Sapnap’s breath against the glass, and his fingers don’t feel like they’re about to fall off when the freezing air bites at his face.

He loves them all.  
But then, there’s Karl.

Karl made up of the softest smiles he’s ever seen. Made up of sweaters and warm arms enveloping him in side hugs. Karl, lending him his sweatshirts when the classrooms drop in temperature randomly. Karl with his stupidly endearing, shimmering eyes and his awfully, inconveniently chapped lips.

How on Earth is Sapnap not meant to fall?

It starts off slowly. He can notice that with time, him and Karl tend to gravitate towards each other like magnets. Something warm settles deep within his lungs, nice and fuzzy in a way he has never felt before.

They sneak out during nights with a full moon out and shining; they hold hands with the excuse that it’s way too cold, but Sapnap has never felt more alive. He has never felt warmer, with his blood boiling and flowing inside his arteries. It rushes to his face and his freezing ears when Karl turns to look at him and squeezes his hands in the tight grasp he has around them.

It becomes a sort of tradition after that night. A look is all it takes to know it's something only for them to share, once they're asked why they have dark circles under their eyes the next morning by Quackity and Dream.  
It's theirs in all its quiet splendor; it's theirs, and the stars'. 

It's Karl and Sapnap, and that's all he could ever need it to be.

The first time they kiss is a cold Autumn night. 

Sapnap holds Karl's hands as they snicker under the pale moonlight. Karl practically glows under the reflection of light, and they look at the other as the familiar comfort of ringing and echoing laughter fades to leave place for something, somehow, even fonder. 

There's no need for words when they both stare quietly, and lean in at the same time, close enough to breathe in warm puffs of exhaled air and nervous, shaking anticipation that you can practically feel to the touch.  
Karl immediately moves closer so that he can cup Sapnap's face in between his hands, soft and weightless against his figure. Sapnap melts into a puddle on the ground the moment he feels Karl's fingertips.

He doesn't mind burning, not if he gets to feel the butterflies flapping around his stomach madly as they do now, and not if he gets to see Karl's blinding smile when they break apart.

And _god,_ he's never felt like this, ever before.

Karl's mere presence drives him insane in the best of ways, makes him feel like there is nothing else in this life he could want that isn't his hands, his eyes, his laughter, and his smile.  
There's something oh so delicate that grows under his skin, that breathes and lives and loves; all just for Karl.

"I love you." He's blurting out before he can catch his own words.  
His fingers trace figures over Karl's cheeks, impossibly wide under the grin he wears, like a badge made of stardust. " _My moon, my sun, my stars._ " He whispers against his lips when they lean in again.

He couldn't be more delighted when Karl looks at him like he's the person that paints the sunset in a million shining colors each time the Moon falls to leave a way for her lover, the Sun, to shine, with her golden beams and loving, enveloping warmth. 

"I thought you'd never say it," Karl says, with that stupidly marvelous laugh that leaves Sapnap breathless each time he hears it rumble. "I've been loving you in silence for years."

He's been forced to pray before; every day of his life.  
He's forced to wake up, to put on his uniform, and for the first words that slip out from his throat each morning, automatic and meaningless to be a silent string of imperceptible words he's read in a book since he was old enough to memorize sentences longer than a couple phrases.

But somehow, this prayer he recites, holds so much more devotion than he could ever fill into words and preaches of hate; of hell and death and eternally burning and consuming flames that shall await him if he keeps on what he has been doing, what he has been _feeling._

Sapnap _falls_ , faster and faster and _faster_ each minute he worships the burning, searing love he feels for Karl Jacobs.

It's worth it, all of it, if he gets to burn along with the person he adores most in the galaxy.

It's made up of soft I love you's and even softer lips against his, hands slipping under desks to intertwine when no one can see and looks that hold all the secrets the universe has never revealed within them.  
It's theirs.

He loves that it's theirs, only for them to see.  
Except when he _doesn't._

_And right now, is one of the moments in which he doesn't._

He's no stranger to having to look at the relentless attempts of girls around the school to try and woo his Karl.  
He's pretended he doesn't see them slip their arms around his waist and lean forward with giggles and flushed cheeks, trying to comb back into place Karl's brown hair like Sapnap hasn't done it millions of times before.

And he can't blame them. Karl is _angelic,_ even with his ugly wool sweaters that somehow manage to be charming. His pearly smile and delicate, almost practiced perfect gazes are enough for anyone to fall victim to Cupid's arrow.  
And the kindness he gifts, natural like the steps he takes around the classrooms don't help much either.  
He truly doesn't blame them.

And he knows Karl doesn't like it either. 

As the nice, and awkward dork he is, he laughs along to their jokes as he moves their arms away, and he accepts love letters and slips them in his pocket to quietly throw them away when they're out of sight later in the day. 

But oh, does it sting right now.  
The girl is being nice, Sapnap knows objectively.  
She tucks her long hair behind her ear and smiles shyly, fiddling with her fingers and displaying a smile. She's clearly nervous, and hesitant of crossing any boundaries. She seems like a nice person, truly does, and Sapnap knows it, but he can't help but let his ego get the best of him.

Before he knows it, it's simply too much. He stands some meters away against a wall next to a classroom while he sees them laugh over something he can't hear all the way here, and the girl bats her eyelashes prettily. Karl is too busy looking away to notice.

Something horribly suffocating settles deep in Sapnap's throat, constructs his breathing, and freezes him to the spot in which he stands, almost like he's a kid with a silly crush again, and he desperately wants to spit the knot forming around his vocal cords out.  
When he tries, words are what comes out instead.

"Hey, Jacobs!" He exclaims from afar, trying his best to sound as nonchalant as possible, but it comes out strained, almost even bordering on annoyed. "C'mere for a second, please?" 

Karl immediately looks up at the sound of his voice, and Sapnap can't help but feel a pang of guilt when he sees the girl glance in Karl's direction, with something that looks akin to sorrow dancing behind her pupils.  
He knows that look has given it to Karl before, long ago, whenever his grey eyes looked away from him to greet someone. He knows what it feels to long for someone, so much, that you feel like you simply cannot breathe. Like your world crumbles around you and your feet are stuck to the ground like roots under the grass.

But there's nothing he can do to help her, and so he relishes in the goodbye wave Karl gives to her when he immediately approaches him with hurried steps and a glow across his face someone around them might recognize as the deep, honest adoration he knows Karl feels for him. 

The boy clearly is about to speak up, but he's interrupted before he can even open his mouth when Sapnap grabs him by the sleeve and slips them both into the classroom behind them. No one seems to notice among the busy walks in the busy hallway of the busy lives of the rest of his classmates, and Sapnap couldn't be more grateful for slipping by them without a hitch.

"Woah- woah, Sap? You okay?" Karl asks when he's pressed against the closed door behind them. His eyebrows form a slightly worried arch, and even with the concern lacing his features, Sapnap thinks he's _beautiful._

He can't help but sigh, his eyes slipping closed, one of his hands traveling down the wooden surface of the door until he can feel Karl's own.  
He wastes no time to slip his fingers in between the other boy's, and give three soft squeezes.

They've practiced it a million times now, coming up with it for the first time in the death of the night tucked inside Karl's bed.  
His bunkmate on the top of them was a light sleeper, and so submerged in sleepy air and late night haze, they decided in between whispers that three squeezes of the other's hand, was their way to say _I love you._ To say it without needing words, to replace the gazes and the lingering touch of lips in front of the outside world.  
Almost like their own silent rebellion, no one else needed to know about.

"I'm okay" Sapnap confirms in a hushed tone, because as much as he may think each and every one of Karl's expressions is worthy of a mental photograph, he could never want for him to be worried more than he needs to. "Just missed you." 

Karl smiles at the confession, impossibly wide, impossibly wonderful, impossibly _Karl-like_. It's enchanting.  
"Oh honeysuckle…" he trails off, voice sweet and familiar, like a hug, or dripping sweet sugar.

Sapnap loves the nickname, always has, ever since Karl called him it first.

"Honeysuckle? Really?" He smirks, but his eyes are soft, wrinkling and twinkling like bells, looking directly into Karl's own.

"I've already told you why." Karl defends himself, tone soft like flower petals and laced with a giggle behind each syllable. "They mean pure happiness and sweetness. And they keep evil away."

Sapnap lets out a quiet laugh. "Then I should be the one calling you that" it's perfect, _it's just theirs._ "you're sweet. And you make me happy." 

Laughter now does really echo around the empty classroom bathed in morning light. "You're such a nimrod, did you know that?" Karl says as he throws his head back against the door.

"Yeah, but I'm your nimrod, though."

Karl scoffs, but it's fond, familiar, and oh so tender as he leans forward to bump his nose against Sapnap's "When will you come up with a better comeback than that?" He almost whispers. Almost.

Sapnap muses over it in faux concentration. He closes his eyes and relishes in the way that Karl's gaze burns into him; he's probably trying to burn the sight into memory. Sapnap tends to do that too.  
They don't get many quiet moments like these.

"Maybe when I stop loving you." He finally says, so tender his voice might break if he tries to be more quiet, only lifting his hand to rest against Karl's cheek when he knows he won't disturb the peace settling around them.

It's more of a whisper than anything. It's a _prayer,_ it's a declaration. It's factual, and it slips past his lips so naturally, it might as well be one of the memorized bible verses in the back of his mind.

"Which is when?" Karl asks, placing a kiss against Sapnap's palm.

"Which _is,_ when stars are no longer above you, my dear." Sapnap smiles, and he's so in love he aches. He's so in love with the wonderful boy in front of him he can feel his knees going weak, and his brain becoming lightheaded. "Even longer if I can."

"Oh, my love," Karl says. "No wonder they call you sappynappy." 

"Hey!-" 

"But that's okay." Is what slips out onto the silent room. It's like it's holding its breath along with them, waiting in awe and remaining the only witness to the loving truths enveloped in silk they say to each other.  
"Cause I don't think I could stop loving you, even after we're gone, and so are the stars."

Moments like these, are when Sapnap simply knows that there is nothing he could want more than Karl's gaze on him for eternity.  
Nothing more he could need that isn't his light, the glimmer of his happiness, and the rumble of his voice. Of everything that makes him his beloved; his sweetness, and his beauty, and his wonderful capacity to be the brightest person in the room without even trying.

As long as Sapnap has Karl Jacobs by his side, there is nothing he has to worry about.  
Not even long texts of rage and anger and hate, in paragraphs that turn into pages upon pages, telling him how wrong it is for him to be so deeply in love.

Even with the lessons he has to unlearn when he listens to his teachers a bit more than he knows he should; even with the night terrors that slip under his eyelids when he thinks he can finally get some rest, how they torture him, make him feel like he is a monster, even if all the crimes he has committed, have been being as happy as he never thought he could manage to be.

Maybe, if the whole world tries to tell him that Karl's hands in between his, and the hushed half-whispered confessions of how their lives will get better once they're out of this _cold_ place are wrong, he never wants to know what is deemed as right.  
Not when he feels so at ease like he can truly have the whole world at his hands, at his very fingertips, only to have the option to hand it over to Karl.  
Just to give it all to Karl.

"Everything I am," Sapnap says in between kisses, so mesmerizing they might as well be the remains of the milky way in the sky, far above them, reciting sonnets and verses when they see him and Karl, so young and yet so deeply infatuated with the other.  
So smitten it hurts to look away, so filled to the brim with adoration it leaves blinding pain to try and pull away from the familiarity that is their intertwined hands.

"Everything the world is, for you." He says, because he can. At least, in the silence of this classroom, he can.

It's just _theirs._ And so Sapnap takes it, because it's always been for them to take freely.  
It's made of happiness, and it's safe unlike any other thing could be. And caring, like no other touch, has been. And it's so, _so_ pure.  
Even with all that people may want to argue against them.

It's Karl. It's always been Karl. And it'll _always,_ be Karl.

"The whole universe, for you, _my sun, my moon and my stars._ "

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading !! I tend to be silly on [twitter dot com](https://twitter.com/sleepy_fl0wers), so u can find me there !! Kudos and comments are SO appreciated, i really hope u enjoyed this ! :D


End file.
